In praise of ... Miriam Makeba

Africa's best-loved diva is bowing out at the end of her latest and final world tour, but Miriam Makeba, now a stately 73, wants to thank all those who have applauded her music and her message for 40 years. Makeba, aka Mama Africa, grew up in a Johannesburg township, was jailed as a baby along with her mother, was a servant for white families and graduated to jazz singing and immortality with numbers such as Malaika, Pata Pata and Africa is Where My Heart Lies. Touring abroad in 1960, she was denied a visa to return home for her mother's funeral and her citizenship was cancelled to punish her for speaking out against apartheid. "I don't sing about politics," she said, "I sing the truth."

Along with Fela Kuti and Hugh Masekela, Makeba put African music on the world map, singing at John F Kennedy's birthday party in 1962. Her opposition to racism became increasingly powerful after the Sharpeville massacre, when she addressed the UN and her recordings were banned in South Africa. Marriage to the American Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael caused problems in the US and her concerts were cancelled by promoters until she was forced into exile in Guinea before finally going home, an icon of resistance, after Nelson Mandela's release in 1990. "I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit."